How can I apply?

What are the requirements?

The Sustainability Certificate is a 17-hour certificate that requires students to take a three-hour anchor course, one three-hour course under each sphere of sustainability, two one-hour seminars, as well as complete a three-hour capstone project.

Fall 2017 Orientation

Thank you to everyone who joined us for the Certificate Orientation on Wednesday, September 13th! The Certificate Staff was thrilled to have an attendance of 70+ students, faculty, and staff join us for an evening filled with talk of the Certificate as well as the community. We began with opening remarks from the Office of Sustainability’s very own director, Kevin Kirsche. In addition, we discussed the breakdown of what the Certificate consists of along with having a workshop to inform students about the capstone project process. It was incredible to see the expansion of the Certificate and how far we have come in our first year. Thank you for the continued support and we look forward to what the rest of this year will hold!

Social Ecology Studio Project Pilot Grants

The Social Ecology Studio is a multi-researcher, collaborative art workspace dedicated to advancing sustainability and resilience through the arts. Capitalizing on art’s ability to engage, inform and activate a diverse range of constituents, the studio acts as a bridge, humanizing and connecting community members and policy makers with issues entrenched in social ecology. The Studio facilitates collaborations with scientific and social research topics from across campus and the community, serving as a hub for graduate and undergraduate students to identify research opportunities while providing space and resources to work collaboratively.

Chasing Coral

Chasing Coral: a free public screening and discussion with filmmakers and key cast members on Wednesday, October 4th at 6 p.m. at the Tate Student Center Theater.

Chasing Coral follows a team of divers, photographers, and scientists as they set out to discover why coral reefs around the world are vanishing at an unprecedented rate. The film features world-renowned coral research conducted at the University of Georgia. Following the screening, a panel discussion will be held with the filmmakers and key film subjects, including Jim Porter, UGA professor and coral ecologist in the Odum School of Ecology, and Zack Rago, the “coral nerd.”

Chasing Coral won the Audience Award for the U.S. Documentary category at the 2017 Sundance Film Festival. A trailer for the film can be viewed here.

Certificate Impact

From initiatives that save our university millions of dollars in food waste every year to helping support sustainable solutions to invasive plant growth, our students are making a difference in the Athens-Clarke County community. Want to find out more? Take a look at some final portfolios produced by Certificate graduates, featuring their experiences with sustainability at UGA!

Green Roof Garden

There's something different about the geography-geology building roof.

Instead of the usual flat, gray roof, the geography-geology building is 2,200 square feet of grass, vegetables and green space. Topped with raised beds full of rich soil, plants and produce bursting with color, the Green Roof Garden is a student-run garden that started about seven years ago by a team of faculty and students known as the Athens Urban Food Collective in the geography department.

In the spring, the garden is planted with a range of crops like turnips, radishes, beets, collards, spinach and salad mixes. Carrots were a Green Roof favorite last year.

"They were gorgeous. You pulled them out of the ground, and the color was the most brilliant. It was just the brightest orange I had ever seen," said Carson Dann, the urban agriculture intern in UGA's Office of Sustainability who leads the Green Roof Garden initiative.